The present disclosure relates generally to a method of, and a system for, verifying the authenticity of items, especially of packaged items.
The counterfeiting of manufactured items poses a substantial risk to the development of many areas of trade. Counterfeit items not only reduce profit for legitimate manufacturers, but also can risk direct physical harm to consumers of counterfeit items, especially pharmaceutical drugs. A variety of technologies has been proposed to enable the detection of counterfeit items.
For example, it is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,442,276 to mark manufactured items with unique codes that are stored in a database. The authenticity of each marked item is confirmed by reading the code on the item, and by performing a search of the database. In the protection scheme described in U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2006/0100964, each item is assigned a unique identification sequence, which is converted to a coded check sequence using a secret key. The coded check sequence is applied to each manufactured item. The verification of authenticity is performed by reading and sending the coded check sequence to a server for processing. In U.S. Pat. No. 8,348,146, three unique codes are applied to each protected item. Authenticity is verified by sending one of the codes to a processing server, which recovers the remaining codes associated with each item from a database, and returns the recovered codes to a user for comparison.
In U.S. Pat. Pub. No. 2006/0165260, each item is supplied with a verification card that contains a unique identifier. The unique identifier on the card is used to verify item authenticity by contacting a verification center. Each identifier is used for verification only once, so that counterfeited items using duplicates of the original identifier may not be successfully authenticated. In Europe Pat. No. 1,577,858, each item is marked by a unique code, and authenticity verification is performed by database lookup at a remote server. The codes on the items are initially covered by a protective layer and are hidden from users. In order to verify authenticity, a user removes the protective layer, reads and sends the code to the remote server. Once the code is used, it is deactivated in the database, and further requests with the same code will return a negative result. The protective layer covering the code ensures that the code on the item is unused and active in the database.
Although the known techniques for detecting counterfeit items are generally satisfactory for their intended purpose, counterfeiting is still rampant, and improvements in counterfeit detection, especially of items contained in a package, are still needed.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to enhance the verifying of the authenticity of packaged items.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and locations of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The system and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.